DIY gene editing using automated lab robot

WASHINGTON: As a teenager, Keoni Gandall already was operating a cutting-edge research laboratory in his bedroom in Huntington Beach, California. While his friends were buying video games, he acquired more than a dozen pieces of equipment — a trans-illuminator, a centrifuge, two thermo-cyclers — in pursuit of a hobby that once was the province of white-coated PhDs in institutional labs. 

“I just wanted to clone DNA using my automated lab robot and feasibly make full genomes at home,” he said. Gandall was far from alone. In the past few years, so-called biohackers across the country have taken gene editing into their own hands. As the equipment becomes cheaper and the expertise in gene-editing techniques, mostly Crispr-Cas9, more widely shared, citizen scientists are attempting to reengineer DNA in surprising ways. 

Until now, the work has amounted to little more than D.I.Y. misfires. A year ago, a biohacker injected himself at a conference with modified DNA that he hoped would make him more muscular. (It did not.) Earlier this year in Austin, a biotech executive injected himself with what he hoped would be a herpes treatment. (Verdict: No.) 
His company already had live-streamed a man injecting himself with a home-brewed treatment for HIV (His viral load increased.) Gandall, now 18 and a research fellow at Stanford, said he only wants to ensure open access to gene-editing technology, believing future biotech discoveries may come from the least expected minds. But he is quick to acknowledge that the do-it-yourself genetics revolution one day may go catastrophically wrong. “Even I would tell you, the level of DNA synthesis regulation, it simply isn’t good enough,” Gandall said. “These regulations aren’t going to work when everything is decentralised — when everybody has a DNA synthesizer on their smartphone.”